My grandfather used to say:  'Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that - not to mention accidents - even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.'

- Kafka, The Next Village

'This desert,' my celebrated colleague Ibn Khaldoun has written, 'This desert is so long it can take a lifetime to go from one end to the other, and a childhood to cross at its narrowest point.'

- Brion Gysin, The Process